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Science is currently facing major challenges in the United States – and with noticeable impacts on Europe. Research budgets have been and continue to be cut and jobs lost, even in key areas such as health and infectious diseases. A viewpoint from Josef Penninger, Scientific Director of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research.

An international research group led by the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) has discovered a promising new drug candidate against severe lung infections caused by the hospital germ Staphylococcus aureus. The study, which has just been published in Cell Host & Microbe, describes for the first time how small molecules from the quinoxalinedione class specifically block the bacterial toxin α-hemolysin – a key trigger of tissue damage and inflammation.

Acquiring external funding is an integral part of any young scientist’s path towards an independent research career. Such additional funds not only make their own scientific success visible, but also give them freedom to implement new and possibly riskier project ideas. One funding instrument that focuses on supporting early stage researchers is the Klaus-Tschira-Boost-Fund. In the current round of applications, 15 out of more than 300 applicants were selected to receive funding of up to 120,000 Euros each – amongst them the junior researchers Mariia Nesterkina and Florian Hubrich from the Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS). The HIPS is a site of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in collaboration with Saarland University. As so-called “Boost Fellows”, Mariia Nesterkina and Florian Hubrich benefit not only from the funding itself, but also from a series of workshops on career development and gain access to extensive career counseling and coaching services. The funded projects are set to start between April and October 2025 and will run for 24 months.

How do viruses and bacteria affect our cognitive abilities? What role do they play in neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and dementia? And how can we protect our brain in the long term? In this episode of the HZI podcast InFact, Prof. Martin Korte, head of the research group “Neuroinflammation and Neurodegeneration” at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI), discusses the links between infections, the immune system, and the brain.

Not only does our body change with age, but so does our immune system. A recent study led by the Centre for Individualised Infection Medicine (CiiM) shows exactly how immune cells age and how infections and vaccinations can influence this process. The CiiM is a joint initiative of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) and Hannover Medical School (MHH). Using a big data approach, the researchers have developed a computer model called the “Single-Cell Immune Aging Clock”, which can be used to determine aging processes within individual immune cells. The scientists are making the innovative aging clock freely available for further research. They hope that it will serve as a useful tool to better understand the aging processes of the immune system, particularly with the context of infectious diseases and immune disorders. The study has been published in the journal Nature Aging.

Regarding the current reporting on the origin of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, Prof. Fabian Leendertz, Director of the Helmholtz Institute for One Health (HIOH), makes the following statement: “Based on the data published to date, it can be assumed that the transmission to humans took place via intermediate hosts (e.g. animal farms), as the contacts and risks are much higher there. This data has been published in various WHO reports and relevant peer-reviewed scientific publications. If there is now other and new data that supports an origin in the laboratory, then that is a different picture. We now have to wait until this data has been examined and reviewed by experts.”